HONOLULU (Island News) — A long-time commercial pilot came extremely close to hitting the Koʻolau Range flying an American Airlines plane just minutes after taking off from Honolulu.
Bob Katz, who has 43 years of experience in the cockpit, was able to review publicly available records of what transpired as that American flight was taking off from Daniel K. Inouye International Airport headed for Los Angeles. Katz’s plane nearly grazed the mountains on Wednesday, Nov. 13.
The following is an interaction between the air traffic controller and the pilot just minutes after take off at around 10:21 p.m. that night.
“American 298 turn right and expedite your climb through terrain and then turn right heading 120,” the air traffic controller said.
“Heading 120, American 298,” the pilot said.
Katz said “expidite” means to take immediate action to a pilot, who did just that and got the plane into the correct flight pattern.
The flight pattern of American Flight 298 took off from H-N-L and headed straight towards the Koʻolau. Katz said the pilot was using the Molokai Five Departure, which explains that right after takeoff the plane is to turn to the southeast, over the Pacific and away not just from Honolulu.
Katz shared his opinion on what happened, “This ridgeline, which at night is going to be invisible, won’t be able to see it. Now, they were climbing to 5,000 feet, which is what the procedure required, they came very close to hitting it. The bottom line is it falls on the crew because they are the ones flying the airplane. We say sarcastically in flying that ‘When air traffic control screws up, air traffic control goes home. When the pilot screws up the pilot dies.’”
Possible disaster was averted and the flight continued to California without further incident.
As to why an automatic alarm didn’t go off, the plane was likely high enough above the approaching terrain to not initiate the automated warning.
The Federal Aviation Administration continues to investigate the incident.
